


My Intended

by plsnskanks (orphan_account)



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Violence, forgot that one, just read the prompt and decide if its for you, so idk, the important and most accurate tag of all, the relationship is more implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 14:42:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11488521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/plsnskanks
Summary: “It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” - Robert E. Lee





	My Intended

**Author's Note:**

> Was just a drabble response to this:  
> It's 2 am and I'm edgy: what if Tord was killed in battle, would Tom be torn up?
> 
> Putting on here because my blog moves fast and it will get lost if I dont archive.

It isn’t satisfying.

Tom doesn’t know why he thought it would be. Edd fails. His revolution collapses. They’re overrun. He’s taken as a POW with Eduardo, Mark, Matt. Tom looks at the faces of four dead men walking as they are being corralled into a transport jeep. On their way to stand trial.

It’s a skin game and Tom knows they are going to be set to hang as soon as the spectacle gets droll enough. He knows that this is it, he can feel Tord’s hand closing around the world, see the shadows of his fingers come rushing across every conceivable valley and mountain of this world.

So he’s got this tiny army, with these shitty odds and all he can think of is he was always a man to bet on shit odds. So he takes a drink and strides the battlefield well less that sober.

And Tord is so cocky. So assured they’ll win this. They’ll smash this last pathetic little resistance. He’s on the battlefield with his helmet at a jaunty angle in his blue dress, gleaming pins catching the light in these flashing sparks.

He looks so regal. So heroic with the roll of tanks behind him and the sky that dusky burnt orange color behind him. He was made for this, he breaths this, he bleeds this.

He breaths a bullet.

Tom thinks the sniper might have just missed his shot by a little. Maybe the wind was off a bit. Maybe Tord moved a little. The point is, it’s hard to think another human being willfully shot someone and gave them a death like that.

He hears Tord didn’t go out easy. That it was probably either poisoning from his own blood, blood loss, suffocation. They aren’t sure yet. Autopsy hasn’t come back.  
The Red Leader dies and in his death is born this odd thing. As he’s bleeding out in the tank, word spreads and the comms are bustling with screams and laughter and hysteric crying and out of the woodwork come able bodies.

People trod down in the ashes of their broken countries, rise up to spite the heel that spurned them. And when they hit back, it is Tom’s fist they are backing. With the death of the Red Leader he is born. They call him that.

Blue Leader.

He takes it for a while. Nods stiffly as they salute him. Sips the drinks they buy in his honor as they steadily take ground from an enemy that seems to have lost its will to fight. To live. It’s funny how you come to realize how much of a personification of his movement Tord was.

Tom sees angry faces squinting at him as they pass through towns. Not everyone feels liberated. Not everyone feels free. It is hard to remember sometimes, that Tord’s message struck a cord with many. That there were plenty willing to bleed for him without any sort of coercion.

The final stand off is the worst and best day of Tom’s life. Paul and Patryk are there, staring him down, with Matt and Edd in front guns to the back of their heads.

“You think that’s a bargaining chip? That I’ll give up our victory for two people? You can back down, or you can figure out that our snipers are well capable of shooting through two bodies,” Tom looks at Edd, who is looking back at him, wide eyed, pale. His fingers are shaking. “In fact, if you will lean your head just so, Edd, I’m sure one of them could shoot you both through the head. Or, you can let them go, no one can get shot and we can give you a fair trial, exactly, I am sure, as you were planning to with these two.”

The situation is at a standstill. Thirty muzzles rise up in unison as Paul raises his pistol high in the air.

And drops it.

Patryk is looking at him with this distraught, betrayed, broken look. Utterly broken. He hurls his gun at the ground like a child throwing a tantrum in a toy store as angry tears start to fall.

“He was doing this for you, you know, for all of you,” Patryk says, and when he says it, it’s only Tom he looks at.

“I am sure he had the best of intentions,” Tom says.

A week later, while he’s sitting out on the balcony of some high rise hotel while waiting for the peace talks to end so he can go home it hits Tom.

Death you see, is a funny concept. It is a concept we are well aware of. Very few people can remember a time when they didn’t know what death was. Grasping death, truly comprehending its finality. It isn’t really something that happens all at once.

It comes in waves.

The first wash comes as he is watching the lights winking at him all throughout the city the night before they decide to give Tord’s entire top command the death penalty for crimes against humanity.

He thinks about how Tord was smiling the moment before he died. How he must have felt at the very top, the pinnacle of success. All his friends were alive, even the ones that hated his guts, and all he had left was Tom. Tiny little insignificant Tom.

Always forget about him. That one, in the blue hoodie. The quiet coward that sunk into the background.

Tom never cries for Tord. Not really. He gets drunk at his own celebration, an honor for the great “Blue Leader” and when Edd jokingly calls him that he loses it. Smashes his fist into his face. That was before he got drunk. He was full sober for that. He’s getting dragged back onto that field and he can hear the sound of Tord choking, imagine what it is like to have your body fighting for everything it’s worth to breath while your body just can’t take that request.

Edd looks at Tom with his black eye and this wounded look and Tom remembers. He remembers that beneath it all, there was always a part of Tord he hated, so purely, so assuredly.

Most people would tell you Tom and Tord were nothing alike. And for the most part, this was true. However both of them knew, had this quiet understanding of each other, this quiet acknowledgement. There was something in them deeper down that they shared.

Tom apologizes profusely, and goes off to drink and drink and drink until that part of him finally dies off. The part that he can’t dredge up, can’t bring into full focus enough to see and recognize it so he can cut it out of himself.

It is far, far too painful. And he thinks maybe the reason Tord is always there now, with the other thoughts and images playing on and on in endless repeat in his head is because Tord was the only person that knew. That understood this broken, ugly, misshapen part of him.

So Tom cries and when he cries it isn’t for Tord. Not really, not wholly. It’s because, with Tord gone he knows, no one will ever know this part of him again, it is his alone to carry, his alone to be burdened with. So the war ends, it ends in April. For everyone else it ends.

But not for him. And also, not for him. For them, and people of their kind, the war never ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Unintentionally re-wrote my favorite end to spec ops, just about, ref 0:40 onward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGEJkRjXSos.


End file.
